Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Just three of England’s 39 police forces say they’ve never investigated a grooming gang

By Georgina Lee-18 Feb 2019

In recent years, we’ve seen a string of so-called “grooming gang” cases make the headlines, where children and vulnerable adults are sexually exploited by groups of offenders. In January, it was reported that fifty-five men had been arrested after seven women claimed they had been abused as children in West Yorkshire.

Today, FactCheck analysis can reveal that nearly every police force in England has investigated, or is investigating, at least one grooming gang case.

Just three of England’s 39 “territorial” police forces were able to confirm on the record that they had never done so.

Asked whether they had ever investigated a case of sexual exploitation of children or vulnerable adults by multiple offenders, one force told us that they didn’t have a specific category for this in their record system.

Two further forces did not provide answers to FactCheck’s queries on the matter and weren’t linked to any cases we could find in a search of press archives.

In total, our analysis concludes that 33 of England’s 39 police forces have either investigated, or are investigating, a grooming gang.

Of these, two forces told FactCheck that they were investigating more than one grooming gang at the moment, although it is not yet known whether any of these will result in prosecution.

Another force told us that they had “investigated and taken action against a number of potential perpetrators (in separate operations) suspected of working together in the pursuit of grooming and exploiting children” and that they had “disrupted their activity and safeguarded particularly vulnerable children.” It is not clear whether these “potential perpetrators” have since faced further police or legal action.

Today’s findings suggest that alleged or actual sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults by groups is widespread in England – and that there may be more cases yet to come to public attention.

How many forces have investigated “Asian grooming gangs”?

There’s one question we’re always asked whenever we cover grooming gangs: what is the ethnicity of the abusers, and in particular, how many are Asian?

Our analysis, based on searches of press archives, has found that 18 police forces in England have investigated a grooming gang case or cases where all or most of the perpetrators were Asian.
Based on the same analysis, reports suggest there are three forces that have only ever brought a case to trial where the perpetrators were white. And a further two forces that seem to have only ever investigated cases where the perpetrators were black.

In ten force areas, we could not establish the ethnicity of the abusers or alleged abusers. In half of those, that was because the force has yet to bring a case to trial, but had confirmed to FactCheck that there was an investigation or investigations underway. If any of these cases ever get to court, we may be able to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

Does this tell us anything about the ethnicity of grooming gangs?

Our analysis provides a partial answer to the question: how many police forces have dealt with grooming gangs, including with “Asian grooming gangs”?

But we have not compiled an exhaustive list of cases and offenders, so this research does not provide an answer to the question that animates a lot of media reporting: are Asian men more likely to be involved in grooming gangs?

The data on the ethnicity of offenders is very limited. Official sources like police and CPS records don’t always hold or provide data on the abuser’s ethnicity. When they do, they generally register in very broad categories, like “white”, “black” or “Asian”.

Pretty much the only reliable source — a 2013 study by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection division of the National Crime Agency using data requested from police forces — indicated that Asian men had carried out 75 per cent of recorded “Type 1” group abuse, where victims were targeted because they’re vulnerable.

The same study found that 100 per cent of recorded “Type 2” group abusers — who abused children because of an overtly paedophilic interest — were white. However, Type 2 abusers were more likely to operate in pairs rather than larger groups, so the number of recorded white group-abusers was lower than the recorded number of Asian group-abusers (70 compared to 229).

This led us to the tentative conclusion that Asian men (who make up about 7.5 per cent of the population) are disproportionately represented among recorded group abusers. Although highly imperfect, that was the best data available to us at the time. CEOP told us that they haven’t updated their figures since then, so for now it’s the only data we have.

Why is Russia standing aloof on the Korean Peninsula?

000_1CJ72I-940x580 — Russian President Vladimir Putin. Source: Alexander NEMENOV / AFP / POOL

@ArtyomLukin-Feb 18, 2019

FOR MORE than a year there has been a flurry of diplomatic activity on the Korean Peninsula.

But Russia is conspicuously absent from the big game.

President Vladimir Putin is yet to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un, who has already held four summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping, three meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and one rendezvous with US President Donald Trump.

Moscow did host the first ever Russia–China–North Korea trilateral at the vice foreign minister level in October 2018.

Russia is also calling for the easing of sanctions on North Korea to reward Pyongyang for its peaceful gestures such as the nuclear and missile testing moratorium.

SEE ALSO: What’s holding back Japan’s peace treaty with Russia?

Still, Russia’s current North Korea policy seems rather perfunctory. It lacks drive and energy, indicating that Moscow’s top priorities are elsewhere.

The Kremlin’s main geopolitical game at present is in the Middle East, not East Asia.

In the wake of Russia’s intervention in Syria, Putin has emerged as the kingpin of the Middle East.

This region is now consuming much of Moscow’s foreign policy bandwidth, raising the question of how much is left to spare elsewhere.

This is not to say Moscow ignores the Korean Peninsula. But it treats the Peninsula as more or less a secondary priority on the list of Russian foreign policy concerns.

Russia’s relative passivity on the Korean Peninsula is also explained by Russia’s limited economic resources.

Moscow cannot afford to generously subsidise North Korea as China does through oil supplies and other means. It is notable that Moscow denies as ’stupid’ the reports that Russia offered to build a nuclear power plant in North Korea in exchange for Pyongyang’s abandonment of nuclear weapons.

According to Russian officials, Moscow is not able to make North Korea a gift as expensive as a nuclear power plant worth several billion dollars.

North Korea also lacks appeal to Russia’s powerful vested interests, including the oil and gas industry and the military–industrial complex. Unlike the Middle Eastern countries or Venezuela, North Korea has no oil.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (C) and his wife Ri Sol Ju (L) attend a performance at the headquarters of the Party Central Committee for the 71st founding anniversary of the Korean People’s army in Pyongyang. Source:
KCNA VIA KNS / AFP

Admittedly, there is a long-standing idea of a Trans-Korean natural gas pipeline that would bring Russian gas to South Korea via the North. But Russia’s gas industry leader Gazprom does not currently view the Peninsula-routed pipeline as a priority in its Asian strategy. The project is high risk with no guaranteed funding.

Russia’s defence companies take little interest in North Korea because it has limited cash, not to mention the international sanctions that prohibit the export of military hardware to the North.

For Russia’s most powerful economic actors, and apparently for the Kremlin itself, the bottom line is that you cannot make money in North Korea — you can only lose it.

SEE ALSO: ‘Cocktails, caviar & Russian models’: Does anything actually get achieved in Davos?

Top Russian officials, including Putin himself, often praise China as the country that is contributing the most to the current diplomatic progress on the Peninsula.

Russian diplomats emphasise that they are ‘very closely collaborating’ with their Chinese counterparts, with bilateral consultations taking place in Beijing and Moscow ’almost on a monthly basis’.

The Russia–China collaboration in Northeast Asia is just one element of their ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ that is only growing tighter under Trump.

Moscow is unlikely to do anything on the Peninsula that would run against the basic interests of its main strategic partner.

The Kremlin is well aware that Korea is vital for China’s security and recognises that Beijing’s stakes in the Korean Peninsula are significantly higher than Moscow’s.

What is expected in return is Beijing’s acknowledgement of Russia’s interests in the areas of paramount concern to Moscow such as Ukraine or the Middle East.

There might even exist a tacit agreement between Russia and China that Moscow defers to Beijing on East Asian issues while, in return, China recognises Russia’s leading role in the Middle East.

Russian deference to China on Korean issues, albeit somewhat hurting Moscow’s great power pride, does make geopolitical sense. Although Moscow’s geopolitical vision of ‘Greater Eurasia’ nominally encompasses East Asia, the Kremlin treats Pacific affairs as a secondary concern compared to Europe, the Middle East or Central Asia.

Even though this strategy has never been spelled out officially or publicly, the Kremlin appears to have chosen to refrain from balancing China in East Asia.

SEE ALSO: China-Russia: A pseudo-alliance fraught with mistrust and irritation

Mongolia is the only East Asian nation that can count on Russian security guarantees vis-a-vis China. Most of East Asia lies outside the area of Russia’s vital interests.

Russia’s overriding priority there is purely defensive: keeping sovereignty over the geopolitically vulnerable Russian Far East. As long as Russia remains a formidable military and nuclear power, its Far Eastern territories are safe against aggression from any potential predator, be it China or anyone else.

Chinese expansionism in East Asia and the Pacific even benefits Russia because it diverts US attention and resources from confrontation with Moscow.

The Kremlin will not lift a finger to balance Chinese advances in the region, including on the Korean Peninsula. Moscow is preparing to enjoy the spectacle of China and the United States battling it out in the Asia Pacific.

Artyom Lukin is Associate Professor and Deputy Director at the Research School of Regional and International Studies, Far Eastern Federal University.

This article has been republished from East Asia Forum under a Creative Commons License.

Lebanon Firefighters Battle Large Shop Fire

Explosions could be heard due to the storage of acetylene, propane and gas tanks.

(LEBANON, Ore.) - The Lebanon Fire District responded to a structure fire today at 1046 F Street in Lebanon. Crews arrived on scene to a large shop being consumed by a fully involved fire.

Feb-19-2019

The initial incident commander called for a second alarm to request additional units from neighboring fire districts as crews immediately began extinguishment efforts. Exposure control hose lines were setup to stop the spread of fire into the office building approximately five feet away.

Explosions could be heard due to the storage of acetylene, propane and gas tanks. There were numerous cars and a forklift that were parked outside of the building. A ladder truck was used to knock down a bulk of the fire and allowed crews to get a quick knockdown.

The fire was brought under control in approximately one hour. The fire was contained to the building of origin.

The district responded with five engines, a ladder truck, medic unit, and four staff vehicles. A total of 27 firefighters were on scene. Albany, Sweet Home and Scio fire departments provided coverage for the city during the blaze.

No injuries were reported during the incident. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Source: The Lebanon Fire District

Bernie 2020: Arab-American advocates show early support for Sanders

In Bernie Sanders, Arab-Americans have found a politician they can trust, activists say

Sanders held a rally in Dearborn, Michigan, in March 2016 (AFP/File photo)

Ali Harb

Washington-

19 February 2019

When Palestinian-American comedian and activist Amer Zahr met Bernie Sanders earlier this year, he urged the senator from Vermont, in the name of the Arab-American community, to run for president again.

"I told him: 'Our community needs you because you're the only one that we trust in this field. We need you as much as we need us,'" Zahr told Middle East Eye.

Sanders officially announced his candidacy on Tuesday, joining a crowded contest of Democrats vying to win the party's nomination and take on President Donald Trump in November 2020.

It will be the 77-year-old senator's second presidential race after he lost the 2016 primaries to Hillary Clinton.

Arab-Americans overwhelmingly backed Sanders then - and community advocates are already showing unwavering enthusiasm for the lawmaker this time around, too.

Arab-American support

Sanders already had a strong base of support among Arab-Americans in 2016 after he ran Arabic campaign ads, met with Arab activists and put forward a foreign-policy agenda that appealed to a community weary of US wars and US politicians' unquestioning backing of Israel.

In predominantly Arab neighbourhoods in Dearborn, Michigan, for example, Sanders beat out his then-primary opponent Clinton by a wide margin of votes, which helped him carry the state in one of the biggest upsets of the 2016 Democratic race.

While his campaign was focused on economic issues, the senator often slammed then-candidate Trump for his bigoted rhetoric and promoted a message of unity.

Prominent Arab and Muslim activists, including Linda Sarsour, spoke at his rallies.

On Tuesday, Sarsour suggested that she would back Sanders again, saying on Twitter that she has contributed $27 to his 2020 campaign.

That average donation - of $27 - was a theme in Sanders's 2016 campaign for president, with the modest sum highlighting his refusal to accept large amounts of money from political lobbyists and special interest groups.

Wihad Al-Tawil, a graduate student of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Chicago, said Arab-Americans are drawn to Sanders partly because of his independence from lobbyists.

She said Sanders is "not beholden" to the "war industry", noting that he opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Speaking in front of a mostly Arab-American audience in Dearborn three years ago, Sanders criticised US military interventions in the Middle East.

"Regime change does not always work out quite as smoothly as some people think it does," Sanders said at the time.

Over the past two years, Sanders has also led efforts in Congress to halt US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Al-Tawil, herself a Sanders supporter, said Arab-Americans' political awareness has led them to trust Sanders.

"They've been through it. They know there is a lot of corruption in government in general, and they could recognise that he wasn't one of those usual political sweet-talkers," she said.

Zahr, who served as a surrogate on Sanders' 2016 campaign, speaking at his rallies, said the senator linked his message of economic justice with racial justice. "He was never seen as a corporate, or warmongering, politician," he said.

Zahr said Sanders addressed the one issue that unites Arab-Americans: Palestine.

While acknowledging that Sanders is not chanting "free, free Palestine", Zahr said Sanders has called for equal rights and self-determination for Palestinians.

"He talks about the overuse of military force by the Israelis; he talks about the economic problems in Gaza and the West Bank. These are things that we want put out there," the comedian said.

'The only candidate we trust'

Zahr said he believed Arab-Americans would "overwhelmingly" back Sanders in next year's elections.

"In 2020, he's the only candidate who we trust, who we've seen stand up for us, who we don't have questions about. And that's very important for us," he said.

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, echoed Zahr's comments about Arab-American voters valuing trustworthiness.

"I think our community has an instinct for candidates that tell the truth and that they feel they can trust," Zogby said, adding that many Arab-Americans would describe Sanders as honest and principled.

"This was a guy that they said, 'I can trust him'. And his positions on the Middle East were icing on the cake."

The community's admiration for the senator "will not change in this cycle", Zogby said.

He also said that the Arab-American vote may give Sanders an edge, especially in places like Michigan, which is home to a large Arab-American community.

However, Zogby stressed that Arab-Americans remain politically diverse. "We have a Republican component and we have a centrist Democratic component; not everybody is on the same page," he said.

Palestine

Another point that has drawn Arab-Americans to Sanders is the fact that his 2016 campaign opened up a national debate on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while questioning the taboo of expressing anything but unwavering support for the Israeli government in presidential politics.

"The Israelis must end the blockade of Gaza and cease developing settlements on Palestinian land," Sanders' 2016 campaign platform read.

While newly elected congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are often portrayed as the first US lawmakers to criticise Israel, over the past two years, Sanders has regularly denounced Israeli policies, including plans to demolish the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank and the deadly crackdown on protesters in Gaza.

Sanders has also been outspoken in rejecting US legislative proposals that seek to legally restrict the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to pressure Israel economically and politically to end its abuses against Palestinians.

But perhaps his most memorable support for Palestinians came during a 2016 debate with Clinton ahead of the decisive New York primaries, in which he rebuked Washington's one-sided approach to the conflict.

"In the long run, if we are ever going to bring peace to that region which has seen so much hatred and so much war, we are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity," he said at the time.

Bernie Sanders' 'revolution' appeals to young Arab Americans

The senator went on to denounce Clinton for failing to speak about Palestinians during a speech at a conference for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which he had boycotted a few weeks earlier.

"There comes a time when if we pursue justice and peace, we are going to have to say that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is not right all of the time," he told his then-Democratic opponent.

Al-Tawil, the student and Sanders supporter, credits the senator with helping to normalise criticism of Israel in US politics.

"He made it a mainstream issue," she said. "Before Bernie Sanders, I think it was off-limit or taboo to speak out against Israeli atrocities against Palestinians."

Zogby said there is a "dialectic relationship" between the rise of Sanders and Democratic voters' shift on Israel.

He said Democrats, particularly young people and members of minority communities, were already starting to view Palestinians more favourably and opposing the practices of the Israeli government.

"Bernie was the midwife who helped bring it forth, but it already was there," he said.

California leads 16-state lawsuit over Trump's emergency declaration

Coalition accuses president of ‘robbing taxpayer funds’
Legal challenge that could slow progress of border wall

Five false claims from Trump's national emergency speech – video

Tom McCarthy -Tue 19 Feb 2019

A coalition of 16 US states led by California has sued Donald Trump’s administration over his decision to declare a national emergency in order to fund a wall along the Mexico border.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the US district court for the northern district of California after Trump invoked emergency powers on Friday when Congress declined his request for $5.7bn to help create his signature policy promise.

His move aims to let him spend money appropriated by Congress for other purposes.

The states’ lawsuit represents part of an unfolding wave of anticipated legal challenges to Trump’s novel scheme for building a border wall, which polling shows a majority of voters do not want and which his own party declined to fund for two years when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.

Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was swept back to power in the midterm elections late last year, vowed that Congress would join the legal effort to block Trump’s emergency declaration.

“The president’s actions clearly violate the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, which our founders enshrined in the constitution,” said Pelosi in a joint statement with Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. “The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the courts and in the public, using every remedy available.”

Legal scholars disagree about whether Trump’s emergency declaration falls within constitutional bounds. In a rambling riff on the question delivered as an aside to his declaration of emergency on Friday, Trump predicted the matter would be appealed to the US supreme court.

“And we will have a national emergency, and we will then be sued, and they will sue us in the ninth circuit, even though it shouldn’t be there, and we will possibly get a bad ruling,” said Trump, “and then we’ll get another bad ruling, and then we’ll end up in the supreme court, and hopefully we’ll get a fair shake and we’ll win in the supreme court.”

California attorney general Xavier Becerra is leading the states’ lawsuit against the administration. He said: “Today, on Presidents’ Day, we take President Trump to court to block his misuse of presidential power.”

Becerra, a Democrat, added: “We’re suing President Trump to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states. For most of us, the Office of the Presidency is not a place for theatre.”

Trump criticized California’s lead role in the multi-state lawsuit challenging his emergency declaration to pay for the wall. On Twitter on Tuesday, Trump noted last week’s decision by California Governor Gavin Newsom to cancel a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Trump claimed, without citing evidence, that the “failed Fast Train project” had become “hundreds of times more expensive than the desperately needed Wall!”

Three Texas landowners and an environmental group filed the first lawsuit against Trump’s move on Friday, saying it violated the constitution and would infringe on their property rights.

The legal challenges could slow Trump’s efforts to build the wall, which he says is needed to check illegal immigration and drug trafficking, and the case is likely to end up in the conservative-leaning US supreme court.

Activists rally against Trump’s declaration of a national emergency. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images

In a budget deal passed by Congress to avert a second government shutdown, nearly $1.4bn was allocated to border fencing. Trump’s emergency order would give him $6.7bn beyond what lawmakers authorised. The move allows the president to bypass Congress to use money from the Pentagon and other budgets.

In television interviews on Sunday and Monday, Becerra said the lawsuit would use Trump’s own words against him as evidence there was no national emergency to declare. Earlier, Trump had said he knew that he did not need to declare an emergency to build the wall, a comment that could now undercut the government’s legal argument.

“Presidents don’t go in and claim declarations of emergency for the purposes of raiding accounts because they weren’t able to get Congress to fund items,” Becerra said on MSNBC.

California has repeatedly challenged Trump in court. Becerra has filed at least 45 lawsuits against the administration.

Oh, the times we live! - EDITORIAL

18 February 2019

n Friday, US President Donald Trump declared a state of national emergency in the United States. The president is in search of a means to provide himself with funds to construct a 230-mile long wall between the US and Mexico. It is quite clear what he is trying to do.Just a few days ago, the US House of Representatives which is the legal body responsible for the allocation of funds to various programmes, refused to make a budgetary allocation of around $ 8 billion to him (Trump) to build a wall between the US and Mexico. According to Trump, the wall is absolutely necessary to keep the number of immigrants, whose numbers have been growing astronomically over the years from entering the US.

The reality is that Trump is trying to circumvent the US Congress ruling, and thereby the US constitution itself, to make good on an election promise, which is based on false allegations, that hundreds of thousands of Latin American criminals -- most of whom are rapists, terrorists, and drug smugglers -- are trying to enter the US illegally. Statistics provided by US government offices themselves, show illegal immigration into the US has in fact drastically fallen.
An opinion piece in the New York Times described the declaration of a national emergency by Trump as a ‘Phoney Wall, Phoney emergency’ since it was, but a week ago, Trump himself asserted “...the wall is very, very, on its way”. If this was so, how could the President claim to be addressing an emergency, the paper asked.
Trump has been asking for this money over the past two years. Even at the time his own Republican Party was holding sway in the House, the President was unable to convince a majority of law-makers in the Republican-controlled House, that they should allocate billions of dollars to his pet border project. Last week’s bi-partisan expenditure Bill, which did not give Trump more money than it allocated to the border wall in December, which led to Trump’s shutting down of several government departments was a particularly galling defeat and an embarrassment to America’s ageing President.

Through his actions the US President is attempting to override Congress, and is directly undermining the US Constitution itself. As the Democratic Party’s two most senior politicians, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said, if the President is permitted to carry out his plan, he would at a stroke “shred the constitution”.
Despite knowing the idiosyncrasies of the present US President it still comes as a shock that he simply declared a state of national emergency to, so-to-say mis- appropriate funds allocated to other programmes, just to suit one particular whim is shocking. One would not be surprised if such an action had taken place in a ‘banana republic’, but the fact is, it is occurring in the good-old USA, which often preaches good governance and transparency to us Asians and so-called Third World countries.

Even worse President Trump’s description of Latin American immigrants as rapists, drug-dealers and terrorists, stink of racism of the highest order. It gives credence to commonly held beliefs especially in Asia, Africa and Latin American countries that the US preaches one doctrine to the world, but practises quite another.
To us in Sri Lanka, events now unfolding in the US, take us down memory lane, when in October last year, certain bizarre events took place effectively bringing the country to a near three-month stand-still. It took the Speaker of the House and the highest Court in the land to bring our erring politicians down to earth. According to media reports a similar pattern appears to be taking place in the US.

Less than four hours after Trump’s announcement of a national state of emergency, a government watchdog group filed suit, demanding that the Department of Justice hand over “documents concerning the legal authority of the President to invoke emergency powers.” Soon after, the State of California announced its intention to sue.On Thursday, even before the announcement was made, Protect Democracy and the Niskanen Centre announced plans to file on behalf of El Paso County and the Border Network for Human Rights.

However, we are sure the US Constitution has sufficient checks and balances to stop run-away presidents. But sadly in our own little corner of the world, history seems to be repeating itself.Today we are hearing persons who should know better, whining that Independent Commissions are not appointing particular individuals whom they favour to sit in the highest Courts of our land.